The Fourth Wall, 2009

The centre of this extensive exhibition project comissioned by the Barbican Art Gallery London (The Curve) and extended for KOW is a historical incident around a group of contemporary cavemen: the “Tasaday”, a tribe that was discovered in the Philippine rain forest in 1971. Western media declared its discovery a sensation. Apparently, the 26 members of this tribe were still living in a Stone Age, unaware of the modern world. However, already in the eighties, doubt arose as to the authenticity of this discovery which was soon suspected to be a swindle. Unquestionably, the news coverage and the photos of these “peaceful savages” have shaped the Philippines’ image in the international media. This was much to the pleasure of Ferdinand Marcos‘ government, who discouraged any serious anthropological research within the country, but was always eager to please the media. Was the Tasaday story true? If so, was this tribe the prey of hungry western journalists? Or was this a hoax, staged to divert attention away from the Marco regime? The West’s projection of a jungle paradise?

“The Fourth Wall”, a notion used in theatre and introduced by Diderot (Discours sur la poésie dramatique, 1758), refers to an imaginary divide between stage and audience. This concept enables actors to appear as authentic, as if they were “amongst themselves”. At the same time, the audience is made to believe that the stage act is “real”. In his project, Wedemeyer applies the notion of the fourth wall to anthropology as well as to photography and film–disciplines and media that have authorised themselves to adequately and authentically describe humankind and the conditions of life. This power, too, builds on the assumption of a fourth wall: a wall that is set up both by the audience’s desire for an illusion of reality as well as by the willingness of art and social sciences to deliver such an illusion.

In his nine films and interviews, Clemens von Wedemeyer constructs and punctures such fourth walls. These both create and shatter the illusion that we are able to distinguish between images of “others” that are real and images that are merely images. It is an investigation into notions of representation and belief. Yet these works also look into the short time span of a “first contact”–be it the first contact between anthropologists and an isolated group of individuals, between actors and their audience, between the visitors and the works in the exhibition.

The centre of this extensive exhibition project comissioned by the Barbican Art Gallery London (The Curve) and extended for KOW is a historical incident around a group of contemporary cavemen: the “Tasaday”, a tribe that was discovered in the Philippine rain forest in 1971. Western media declared its discovery a sensation. Apparently, the 26 members of this tribe were still living in a Stone Age, unaware of the modern world. However, already in the eighties, doubt arose as to the authenticity of this discovery which was soon suspected to be a swindle. Unquestionably, the news coverage and the photos of these “peaceful savages” have shaped the Philippines’ image in the international media. This was much to the pleasure of Ferdinand Marcos‘ government, who discouraged any serious anthropological research within the country, but was always eager to please the media. Was the Tasaday story true? If so, was this tribe the prey of hungry western journalists? Or was this a hoax, staged to divert attention away from the Marco regime? The West’s projection of a jungle paradise?

“The Fourth Wall”, a notion used in theatre and introduced by Diderot (Discours sur la poésie dramatique, 1758), refers to an imaginary divide between stage and audience. This concept enables actors to appear as authentic, as if they were “amongst themselves”. At the same time, the audience is made to believe that the stage act is “real”. In his project, Wedemeyer applies the notion of the fourth wall to anthropology as well as to photography and film–disciplines and media that have authorised themselves to adequately and authentically describe humankind and the conditions of life. This power, too, builds on the assumption of a fourth wall: a wall that is set up both by the audience’s desire for an illusion of reality as well as by the willingness of art and social sciences to deliver such an illusion.

In his nine films and interviews, Clemens von Wedemeyer constructs and punctures such fourth walls. These both create and shatter the illusion that we are able to distinguish between images of “others” that are real and images that are merely images. It is an investigation into notions of representation and belief. Yet these works also look into the short time span of a “first contact”–be it the first contact between anthropologists and an isolated group of individuals, between actors and their audience, between the visitors and the works in the exhibition.

Intro (The Fourth Wall), 2009
16 mm film loop, B/W, silent, 3 min
Shot in black and white 16mm film, the film features a casting session with an actor who later appears in the installation’s final film The Gentle Ones, a play inspired by the Tasaday staged in the Barbican Theatre.

Shot in black and white 16mm film, the film features a casting session with an actor who later appears in the installation’s final film The Gentle Ones, a play inspired by the Tasaday staged in the Barbican Theatre.

Wood (The Fourth Wall), 2009
2 channel installation, HD video, 6:30 min, loop
Shot from a helicopter, the front projection simulates the gaze of an observer, the explorer who seeks and imagines the encounter, while the reverse shows an empty piece of wood from within, where nothing happens.

Found Footage (The Fourth Wall), 2008–2009
Digital video, 31 min
A carefully compiled selection of found footage ranging from news reports and feature films to anthropological documentaries. Directly addressing the audience, the artist emphasises the didactic content of the film.

Reception (The Fourth Wall), 2009
3 channel video installation, 13 min, 4:3
Reception is a triple projection showing the celebrations after the theatre premiere of The Gentle Ones. Shot in the Barbican Conservatory it features the first contact between the actors performing as members of the cave-dwelling group inspired by the Tasaday and their theatre audience. Significantly, this interaction between observed and observing is the point at which the ‘fourth wall’ is broken.

Reception is a triple projection showing the celebrations after the theatre premiere of The Gentle Ones. Shot in the Barbican Conservatory it features the first contact between the actors performing as members of the cave-dwelling group inspired by the Tasaday and their theatre audience. Significantly, this interaction between observed and observing is the point at which the ‘fourth wall’ is broken.

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Against Death and interview: How to deal with the uncontacted?, 2009, HD video, 16:9, 9' and 35', film still

GermanEnglish

Against Death (The Fourth Wall), 2009
35 mm film transferred to HD video loop, 8:28 min.
Shot in 35 mm film in a Barbican flat in London, an explorer tells his anthropologist friend about an experience with a previously uncontacted group in the jungle and a ritual he underwent wich he claims granted him immortality. When his friend fails to believe him, the explorer demonstrates his inability to die, and the scene seamlessly loops back to its beginning. Like the endlessly repeating film, the explorer is frozen in a loop outside real time due to his immortal status.

Shot in 35 mm film in a Barbican flat in London, an explorer tells his anthropologist friend about an experience with a previously uncontacted group in the jungle and a ritual he underwent wich he claims granted him immortality. When his friend fails to believe him, the explorer demonstrates his inability to die, and the scene seamlessly loops back to its beginning. Like the endlessly repeating film, the explorer is frozen in a loop outside real time due to his immortal status.

The Gentle Ones (The Fourth Wall), 2009
HD video, 28 min, 16:9
‘The Gentle Ones was initially inspired by the Tasaday, who were secretly audiotaped in their cave.The transcriptions of the tapes, which were published in John Nance‘s book, The Gentle Tasaday: A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest (1975), gave me the impression, as if the recordings were staged, in a sense that these transcriptions were probably real, but written almost like a theatre play. The probable isolation of the Tasaday reminded me of actors who have to isolate themselves from the outside world for the duration of rehearsals. So I wanted to show actors rehearsing for a play that was inspired by the Tasaday. On stage. They could even live on the stage to try to make their play more ‘real’. This is a technique often used by actors and directors: to go into isolation and to try to live through the same things the play is dealing with.’

‘The Gentle Ones was initially inspired by the Tasaday, who were secretly audiotaped in their cave.The transcriptions of the tapes, which were published in John Nance‘s book, The Gentle Tasaday: A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest (1975), gave me the impression, as if the recordings were staged, in a sense that these transcriptions were probably real, but written almost like a theatre play. The probable isolation of the Tasaday reminded me of actors who have to isolate themselves from the outside world for the duration of rehearsals. So I wanted to show actors rehearsing for a play that was inspired by the Tasaday. On stage. They could even live on the stage to try to make their play more ‘real’. This is a technique often used by actors and directors: to go into isolation and to try to live through the same things the play is dealing with.’

Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in 1974 in Göttingen, Germany, currently lives and works in Berlin and holds a professorship for media art at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. The artist and filmmaker studied photography and media at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and graduated as Meisterschüler of Astrid Klein in 2005. Clemens von Wedemeyer participated in group shows such as the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005), the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006), Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2007, the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008) and dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). He had solo shows among others at MoMA PS1, New York, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, the Barbican Art Centre, London, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Hamburger Kunsthalle. “ESIOD 2015” premiered at the 66. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale) in 2016.